Some iPhone 15 users are complaining their smartphones are getting too hot, but not everyone feels the burn, and in nearly every case, the temperatures are still within spec.
Some iPhone 15 users are complaining their smartphones are getting too hot, but not everyone feels the burn, and in nearly every case, the temperatures are still within spec.
Just like any other major piece of hardware that is regularly updated, the release of a new iPhone model invites scrutiny from industry observers, critics, and early adopters. While the complaints and fears cover a number of areas, one that has resurfaced for the iPhone 15 is claims of the device overheating.
It’s been less than a week after release, and there have been reports of the latest model getting a bit toasty when under certain scenarios, but especially in the time after wireless charging has stopped.
In a number of instances, people have complained that their iPhone has gotten hot, or more specifically, a bit too warm to use comfortably. Complaints range from seeing temperatures rise above 40C, to others who find slightly lower temperatures to be a little worrying.
Others are also taking to social media to confirm their iPhone isn’t affected by overheating at all.
It is unclear why some users experience hot iPhones while others don’t have trouble at all. One of our editors had some issues over the weekend, but they’ve cleared since. Another never had any problems at all.
While many could take the heating to be a problem, it may not really be an issue. An iPhone heating to 44C isn’t entirely abnormal behavior, despite the personal distress it may cause.
Heat generation
Excluding problems like the rare battery rupture, an iPhone can heat up in a variety of ways.
The most obvious is environmental factors, namely where you’re placing the iPhone, regardless of your actual use of it. Leaving it out in the sun on a very hot day can certainly heat up the iPhone, even without it being turned on.
An iPhone can heat up in a few ways, and it basically boils down to transfers of energy or the usage of energy.
The first, transfers of energy, refers to when you recharge an iPhone’s battery. Whether by wireless charging over Qi or MagSafe, or using a physical cable, the transfer of power isn’t a perfect process, and heat can dissipate.
Heat generation also occurs with the battery itself, since recharging a battery is a chemical reaction that produces heat as a byproduct. While batteries don’t tend to get warm through discharge, they do get a lot warmer when you’re recharging the device, simply because of that exothermic chemical process.
Complaints of hot iPhones after charging are common, simply because charging devices tend to get things warm. It’s an almost unavoidable issue.
The other way an iPhone can get warm or hot is through usage. Running games and intensive applications that consume more resources and power than typical can warm up components like the CPU and GPU over time.
In Apple’s hardware, the CPU and GPU are on the same system-on-chip (SoC), which makes things a bit tougher to deal with.
